


spotty reception;

by cateeth



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Domestic Abuse (mentioned), Friends to Lovers to Enemies, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, and no biological seed has ever been graced with it, edens gate contains five brain cells total, i suppose .. ?, lovers? i suppose, no beta i die like the fool i was born as, vague cannibalism references because thats love babey!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cateeth/pseuds/cateeth
Summary: in the red neon light you looked like death. you also looked beautiful.
Relationships: Female Deputy | Judge & John Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/John Seed (past)
Kudos: 3





	spotty reception;

**JOHN:** COULD YOU LOVE ME **?**

She has never been so physically close to someone yet apart. The light from the ending sun burns through the pines. She’s curled away, tucked in the edges of the Henbane, crashing sound of river rocks against each other. Her body, a secret, a hidden prayer in the edges of the world. The raw bark of the tree presses into her back, his words curling around her like an old friend. The worn corners of her fingers, a split running down the edge of her thumb by the nail. It’s barely an injury, her skin still burnt around her elbow and curling around her left forearm, a bullet only a couple days removed from her left shin. But it still hurts, feels like he’s worming himself into the sore spots of her body. 

**ELIZABETH:** I THINK I AM INCAPABLE OF LOVE.

If she disappeared, right here and now, which one would miss her. Who would comb the world for her, check every tree, inside every cellar and wear his feet to bone and blood to find her? Who would wear a groove in the world looking for her? For even just a scrape of her skin or a thread of hair? She’s sure she knows which one would be her hunter.

 **JOHN:** IS THAT SO? HAVE YOU TOLD YOUR HUSBAND THAT?

 **ELIZABETH:** FIANCÉ.

 **JOHN:** SO YOU’RE GOING TO WHAT? LEAVE HERE AND PROMISE TO LOVE HIM UNTIL DEATH DO YOU PART?

Being a liar isn’t _new_ to her, she’s had a silver tongue for a long time and so has he. Her fingernails dig into the cut of her finger again, a slight dip into the flesh without breaking the skin. He can see the same sunset as her, as it dips over the hills and bleeds a warmth across the valley that breaks into the other regions. It’s nice, thinking that they’re watching the same thing. That they’re closer than they really are, that he might be leaning on the other side of the tree if she just doesn’t look there.

He loves to poke and prod, to pull at each strand of her. Unravel each awful piece. To see if he can take out all the hideous parts of himself and compare them to hers. See if they have matching scars, if the thickened scar tissue curled around his heart looks the same as hers. He’s filled with them, disgusting wounds from his past. The ones faded from his body already, the soft ones on his hands that can barely be felt, let alone seen. The ones on his back that he’s convinced will never go away, the reason he cracked the full length mirror in the bathroom. The new scars on the sides of his hands from breaking it after he pulled the glass out. She’s got something like that, he knows it. Everytime he looks at her, he sees it. Reflected right back at him in her dark eyes. How familiar trauma can be.

 **ELIZABETH:** MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY FIANCÉ IS _MINE_. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU.

It rots in her mouth, how she refuses to say his name. Keeping up a shitty illusion that she’d didn’t walk out on her _ex_ -fiancé a matter of days before arriving at Hope County. John already has enough to lord over her. He doesn’t need the crushing realization that outside of here, there isn’t anyone. An ex, grandparents on the other side of the world, an aunt she doesn’t share blood with and coworkers who haven’t even noticed she’s gone. That for all the hell that binds her body together from being here, _she belongs_. That here, she has a family and a purpose. She has the Rye’s — Carmina and her bright pink cheeks, chubby ravioli sized fists who screams with joy whenever she sees her Godmother. She’s got Sharky and Hurk — who find delight in making her laugh until she cries and slow dance with her to disco. Jess and Grace — who hunt silently beside her and Peaches in the night, who are so quiet sometimes if she couldn’t feel their eyes in the dark, she might forget they’re there. She’s got a family here. She’s not a Hope County deputy, she’s Burke’s second who got unlucky and picked for this fuck awful mission. She was an outsider to the bond of Whitehorse, Hudson and Pratt. She’s not part of that inner circle, she’s not Burke’s friend either. She’s not a member of his team, she got transferred into it for this mission. She’s always been lonely, apparently.

 **JOHN:** DON’T BE LIKE THAT WRATH.

 **ELIZABETH:** DON’T CALL ME THAT.

Her voice draws cold, the breeze picking up with it. He’s too much like him — like her _ex_ -fiancé. He’s too much like Andrew _fucking_ Olsen and he’s too much like her. A cocky bastard determined to get what he wants and she’s sure that if his fist curled around her neck in anger or threw a wine glass that grazed her cheek, she’d see them as the exact same man. That shitty, tragic backstory with a religious upbringing by someone not your parents, prestigious schooling and she’s smoked too many menthols and he’s drunk too many bottles of ridiculously expensive whiskey for them to pretend like they’re not the same person. But there’s something as equally awful in him as the man she was supposed to marry. 

**JOHN:** I COULD LOVE YOU. I CAN. I WOULD. DESPITE IT ALL, DESPITE YOUR FLAWS. I COULD.

It’s hard, trying to dig a knife into the marrow of her bones so she can pick him out. He’s living in the air bubbles of it, tiny little pockets where he’s deeply ingrained into her skin. Her hands want to touch his, she’s barely formed calluses on her palms but she imagines his are littered with them. There’s a vulnerability to something as childish as handholding. How neatly and softly they’d fit together. Another life, perhaps. Another life, definitely.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU COULDN’T. YOU’RE SO COLD INSIDE NO FIRE COULD EVER WARM YOU. THERE IS A HOLE WHERE YOUR HEART SHOULD BE JOHN.

There is something horrible and intimate about them. Something disgusting that rests inside of her like slime and mildew, clogging up her pores and breaking out stains on her. He’d asked her about her chicken-pox scars after she’d said _yes_ . The first words she’d said to him after stepping foot in this god forsaken county. Asked about the swollen knuckle that still had an engagement ring on it that she had clearly tried to pull off at some point. About the slight scar that grazed under her left eye and brushed her nose. Every little mark on her skin before he’d wheeled Hudson away and she’d flung herself down the stairs in an attempt to get away from him. There was _something_ about that night, about the heat of the bunker and the stench of murder that awoke something. Made vomit boil in her stomach and bubble over her lips as she squatted in a drain pipe after seeing Hudson and smelling the rotten, tattooed flesh he’d hung up. _Before then_ , there had been something. Something real and as spongy as flesh, she’d been able to feel it with her fingers and hear it in the wind.

She’d known him. How his voice came in hiccups when he cried, how those nights she could practically taste the salt of his cheeks. About the plague that lived inside of him and was desperate to grow from his flesh. The faminine that threatened the land he walked on, destroying everything he’d ever held close. She always walks a little close to gravestones after they talk, like she’s saying hello to an old friend. It lurks in the idyllic quiet, their unspoken words and the curls of his nightmares. **(‘** _Will you tell me about yours?_ **’** He’d whispered into the radio as her hushed voice dulled, one night. It had been a ploy, a desperate attempt to draw her voice from her. Hear her again, for as long as she’d listened to him and responded to him in soft and dulsid hums, she’d yet to speak a word. **)** She had pooled with vomit, how close she’d kept them. Clinging to them like they were the last pieces of her, as if they were all she had. Her nose had turned up when he’d asked, cutting their connection.

She hadn’t properly peeled his flesh back then. Now she knew the creature akin to Frankenstein’s monster who lived under his human skin.

 **JOHN:** BUT YOU’VE FILLED IT. YOU’RE LIVING IN THE GAPING WOUND WHERE MY HEART SHOULD BE, ELIZABETH CHARLOTTE. JUST AS I AM IN YOUR MARROW. I LOVE YOU, I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER. I LOVE ALL OF YOU. YOUR EYES, YOUR HAIR, THE WAY YOU HOLD A GUN, THE CRINKLE OF YOUR NOSE, YOUR THIGHS. I LOVE ALL OF YOU. I LOVE EVERY ROTTEN AND TERRIBLE PART OF YOU. I WANT YOU. I WANT YOUR CONFESSION, YOUR BAPTISM, YOUR ATONEMENT. I WANT TO BE WITH YOU. WE COULD BE HAPPY IN NEW EDEN.

 _I HATE YOUR ARROGANCE_. How he thinks he knows her, as if her scars and body are all there is to her. The curl of her intestine, the colour of her liver. How her womb rests inside her and the soft roll of fat around her stomach. How her arms rest when she’s tired, the way her body slumps. It’s all artificial, how he knows her. He knows about the scar on her knee from when she wiped out on her bike but not how she snorts when she laughs too hard. He knows about the shrapnel scarring on her stomach next to her stretch marks from a bomb that got too close but he doesn’t know about the first time she woke up truly alone. He’d cut her open for an autopsy before, examining every physical piece of her. He doesn’t know her. But then again, neither does the other. Maybe no one was ever meant to know her. _I WOULD BE SICK INSIDE YOU IF I COULD_.

 **ELIZABETH:** WE’LL TALK LATER.. I SUPPOSE.

*******

**JOHN:** HOW IS YOUR BULLET WOUND HEALING? MY CHOSEN SAID HE GOT YOU RIGHT IN THE HIP.

 **ELIZABETH:** JUST ABOVE THE HIP, ACTUALLY. MISSED MY KIDNEY.

Her fingers graze over the wound when he says it, pushing down the edge of her dirt covered jeans for her fingers to press against the tight stitches that bound the hole together. It chokes up in her throat a little, thick and heavy as it rests inside. It’s a small wound, ugly hand-done stitches pulling her skin together. She had been laying in the mud, surrounded by the bodies of the Chosen she’d taken down, bleeding and shaking. There hadn’t been time to properly clean the wound, just dump half the alcohol she’d been planning to use as a molotov on the wound and start pulling it together with the remains of her first-aid kit before John himself caught up to her. She’d crawled out the mud, half-dragging herself into the river to end her trail before hotwiring a van and ending up back in her shitty room above the Spread Eagle.

Memories grow angry, nail scratching the wax thread. Trauma eaten, practically. Her lips draw into a frown, breath shaking as her fingers pull off the call button.

 **JOHN:** DID YOU EVER CONSIDER I HAD THEM MISS ON PURPOSE?

He’s sitting alone, the midday sun blazing into his bedroom. Silk sheets, smooth against his skin and the thick scab still healing on his arm from where he’d overshot while chasing her in some stupid car and ended up half in a tree. _It will match her burn_ , he thinks. Thickened scar tissue that’s wound itself around her from the crash, almost peeling back to the bone. He picks at the scab, a leak of blood pooling from it and staining into the grey silk.

She’s been in his house before, he knows it. There was a slight tilt to one of the photos of Joseph and him, the dust disturbed. He almost didn’t notice until he smelled his shampoo in her hair the next day. They _could_ be happy, _maybe_. She’s layered in sin, thick like grease and sour stomached. He saw the vulnerability in her once, under that damn streetlight. When his hands twisted into dirty golden hair and his skin scratched against hers. She felt like silk against his calloused hands, like she could run through his fingers like water. He’d never been more happy, more alive then in that moment with her. She’d tasted like cherry and the rain was cold against his skin, the streetlight and shitty diner sign illuminating everything around them. It’s a precious moment, saved and stored away with the few savoured moments he shared with his brothers.

He likes to think about her, when he’s alone. Remembering how she felt against him and how that single moment meant the world to him and he sometimes wonders if she still remembers it. _Maybe_ , there’s another timeline - another universe - another something in which neither of them walked away after that day. A universe where two weeks later she didn’t meet the man she’s going to marry and he didn’t hide away, afraid of being loved. Maybe there’s another version of them that’s happy here.

 **ELIZABETH:** _SURE_ , _JOHN_. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD INVEST IN PEOPLE WHO CAN SHOOT BETTER.

Her voice curdles, souring into a laugh at the end. His body hurts, molten purple bruises covering his skin but they’re the closest thing to a kiss he’s going to get from her. It’s the only way she’s going to touch him. Violence is their love language, it’s written in a series of _almosts_ and _nearlys_ in the swollen patches of his skin. She’s familiar, she’s like a second skin to him. They’re the same. He sees it every part of her. Her body language, her mannerisms, the way she touches long faded scars and sits like there’s always someone watching. The day after the Lenberg trial, he’d taken her cigarette from her lips and her lipstick had tasted sweet when it touched his skin. She’d laughed at the smudge of lipstick that imprinted on his skin. He’d touched the spot on his lips where it had stained for days after.

 **JOHN:** THEY MISSED YOUR HEAD FOR A REASON.

She’s silent but he can hear her breathing. The static crackle of the radio humming as she inhales, an almost shaking sound. He shifts in his bed, picking at the scab again. She bites her nails, he’s seen it. She’d been so put together when they first met, faux ivory nails tapping on a desk and her hair twisted back. She’d smelled like flowers without a single flaw against her skin. He’s seen her now. Bitten back nails, hair always pulled back in a scraggly ponytail with dirt smudging her flesh. There’s open wounds on her almost constantly now, porous and visceral.

He’ll send his Chosen after her and then always ask if she’s okay. It’s hypocritical at best, asking for her to be drugged and dragged to him and when he inevitably fails to find her and bring her home -- ensuring she’s _alive_. It isn’t _just_ that Joseph wants her alive, it’s never been that. She’s more than that, she’s always been more than that. She’s the key to everything, the goddamn Lamb who’s going to save them or bring ruin upon this Earth and he’s very much still trying to figure out _which one she is_.

His teeth clench, a pause of hesitancy on his part as he drags his finger over the talk button again. Her silence is always unnerving, especially in moments like this. When she’s wounded, a feral curled animal still with one foot caught in the trap and trying to lick her wounds. He’s not naïve enough to believe she’ll allow him in, to curl up in her bed and softly bandage her wounds. She’s tiny, a small creature and he could easily slip in beside her and rest against her. But she’s a coyote, slippery and fanged. She’d be just as likely to flee if he got too close or to allow him in, only to turn around and sink her teeth into his jugular. Stain their sheets wine-toned and bathe her skin in the pooling blood.

 **JOHN:** **(..)** WOULD YOU LET ME COME OVER? MAKE SURE YOU’RE OKAY?

 **ELIZABETH:** NO. NOT IN THIS LIFETIME.

*******

“Are you new here?” She’s half zoned out, near dazed. There’s a crack of sun leaking through the clouds into the foyer from the window, drawing a soft halo of illumination behind her. Pre-fixed and focused on a book, before her head peaks up with a sharp jolt.

Her voice is poised, soft, “Yeah— is it that obvious?” There’s almost an undertone of a laugh to it, lips curling into a smile. He’d never seen her before, having come to remember the names and faces of nearly all the Marshals and cops that passed through court during his cases. 

He _almost_ says yes. Her gait, how she holds herself. The twisted way that her legs are positioned, knees crossed while standing and her arms neatly folded over her chest. Her lipstick is thick, a matte dark red and clearly expensive enough that as her pearly teeth dig into her plush lips, it doesn’t smudge. Her hands fiddle, fingers gently trailing over each other. “ _Lamb_ , right?” Confidence reeks from him, practically dripping from his words. _He knows her, he knows exactly who she is_. Google is a gift and Elizabeth Charlotte Lamb is an orphan from Oregon who studied psychology and got into the Marshals a matter of months ago. Her Facebook profile picture has her grinning, alone. All her photos are alone. _She breeds loneliness_ , he thinks to himself.

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” the correction is soft. Lacking the sharpness her coworkers have. The delicate features remind him of her last name and the book tucks under her arm, extending her hand. He’s so incontestably aware of _everything_ in that moment. The texture of her palm, the smell of her perfume and the warmth that almost bleeds from her. If the fact he didn’t recognize her wasn’t enough to show her as someone new, the radiating hope in her pores would give it away. “But everyone calls me Liz.”

“Do you have a middle name?”

“Charlotte.”

“Well then, _Elizabeth Charlotte,_ I’d rather not be everyone.”

*******

**ELIZABETH:** WHAT WOULD I HAVE TO DO TO GET HUDSON BACK?

It’s late this time. She rarely calls first, doesn’t even always answer when he calls. It’s befitting of anything close to functional or normal. She’s been living in the château of his heart for a very long time, carved herself out a small spot in the vacant gap of where his heart used to be. He loves the marrow of her bones he lives in, it’s warm and soft. It bubbles against his skin and he’d be happily content to live there forever, merge himself in with her. Her skin is ripe, soft peach and ready to bruise. There’s soft spots, dents in the rosey skin. It’s a worthwhile prayed ending, fingers trembling and red vine coughing blood. There’s intimacy in the moment a lover becomes an enemy, her agony threaded together. He wants to fuck her, dig his fingers into her rotten spots and sink his teeth into the delicate pieces of her. Ungrateful living, her body curved and curled. He imagines if he sunk a knife into her, she would sink around it, almost merge with it. His teeth sink into the soft fat of his cheeks, breath stopped and voice shaking.

 **JOHN:** STAY WITH ME. BE WITH ME. BE MINE.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU KNOW I CAN’T DO THAT.

He knows it, he truly does. She’ll never stay, she’ll never be with him. Not here, not like this. It will never be the Fairbank Diner again, it will never be cherry pie à la mode again. He’ll never drink hot chocolate while she drinks black coffee. It’s silly to mourn for a moment. It’s his own treasure, kept close to her corpse. Joseph doesn’t know it exists and nor does Jacob. The _first_ Faith, Lana - she knew it. She was different to the others - the other Faith’s and his brothers. They’d drunk Rose Rabbit Butterscotch Liqueur and he’d spilled his guts out. She’d clasped her hands around his when he dug the knife in, pulled it across the soft flesh of his stomach and blood had spilled across the floor.

Faith - _Lana_ \- she’d understood, he’d told her all about the girl who changed his life. He’d talked for hours about the curve of her lip, how the shadows clung to her cheekbones that night, how the smell of her perfume clung to his coat days after. He’d talked about how it felt to hear the rumor that she’d stayed dating someone else. _That fucking defense attorney_.

 **JOHN:** (..) JUST ONE NIGHT. STAY WITH ME FOR A NIGHT. _PLEASE_.

There’s a cramp in her upper thigh, close to the bullet wound. Fingers run over the tendon above her knee and she’s always been good at dying for the smallest things. Gritting her teeth, awkward and near lachrymose personality. Breath taut, curled in the back of her throat. _We should talk about this problem,_ it lingered inside. She doesn’t love him, she’s horrific and incapable of love. It’s cold and dead, buried with the bodies of her parents and siblings. Her rotten little heart, his gaping chest wound. She bites her swollen, rotten tongue and presses her nails deeper into the soft tendon. There are many causes of death, mainly, life.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU’D NEVER LET ME LEAVE.

 **JOHN:** I WOULD, I PROMISE. I’D LET YOU LEAVE. I’D GIVE YOU ANYTHING YOU WANTED, MY DARLING.

There’s another lifetime where that might bring tears to her eyes but for now, it all brings is a scowl. Twisted and her nose scrunched, shaky breath and the sharp curl of her body - a roll of her eyes. _Darling, darling, darling.._ He isn’t the first man to call her that. Likely won’t be the last. But it stings like a wasp and swells her throat and sounds almost _exactly_ like the other. They’re molten wounds on her body and how desperate she is to annihilate herself from their touch.

She still remembers the graze of his hands on her cheek, the touch of his lips against hers and the light warming her skin. It’s not been in the forefront of her mind for a long time - lingering in the back like a shadow. The scratch of her shoes against the gravel, the soft twist of his hands in her hair and the sound of cars passing that faded into a blur with the static of the diner sign. Her lips were numb from the cold and her hands soaked to the bone; it didn’t matter. It _hadn’t_ mattered at the time. It matters now when the cold of late winter sinks into the knuckles of her hands and rests in the joints of her knees. When she wakes up in the morning with damp, frost covered windows and it just feels like that diner again because it’s so hard to pull the terrible temperature away from the memory. The curl of his voice and no one but him has ever called her _Elizabeth Charlotte_ and she so rarely hears her first name nowadays, it rings like a bell; catching her off guard whenever she hears it.

 **ELIZABETH:** DON’T CALL ME THAT.

 **JOHN:** I CAN’T CALL YOU WRATH, I CAN’T CALL YOU DARLING. WHAT CAN I CALL YOU?

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU CAN CALL ME MY NAME.

*******

She’s never met a man who oozes confidence like him. It weeps from his pores and coats his skin. She’s uncomfortable at best and thorny at worst. Her perplexing personality and painfully embarrassing demeanor. She isn’t a stranger to stalking the internet, she’s poured over news articles about _John Duncan_ , dubbed as the Inquisitor from the media and her teeth ground together when it came for him to cross examine her but the fear never got a real chance to set in. The brief clips she’d seen never reflected the man in front of her, the cold voice that had echoed from her crackled computer didn’t sound anything like the almost heartfelt voice that spoke to her over the podium. He’d touched her face after the trial, asking her for coffee.

“One thousand and one nights,” She replied, the soft sound of acrylic nails tapping against the table, “One of my aunts used to tell me the story when I was younger. I always thought how Scheherazade outwitted Shahryar was impressive. So many commonplace fairy-tales and folk-stories rely on a prince saving the princess but Scheherazade does what Cinderella and Aurora could never. She’s clever and quick-witted- what can I say? Child me aspired to be her, and I suppose I never grew out of it.”

He smiles into his drink, a long pause between his words, “The rabbinical legend of Lilith, the first woman. I think it’s beautiful - she chose herself over martyrdom and suffering aside man. They call her _night creature_ , _night hag_ \- made of monstrous spectres of her. _Serpents_ , _jackals_ , _satyrs_ , _wildcats_ , _owls_ \- in her castle of thorns and briers. I would die for her.”

 _Possess me, caress me_ \- his hand reaching across the table, grazing against her fingers. She could live in this moment forever, something finally soft and gentle. Violence is violence for the rule of beasts, he’d said once; laughed like it was a joke. No creature comes without sacrifice, her hands leaning into his and something in the universe loses the moment he wins. Everything is always in balance, in motion. Nothing is set and there will be nothing left in the end. 

“You like terrifying women?” Her neck taut and arching, enough foolishness of hope and enough bruises that speak those stories. _I was your grief_. Fat mouthed and memory dazzled, possessed by some other love. A constant tug of grief and pain, his teeth chewing into the corners of his cheeks. As if they’re the last of their kind, two lonely creatures left with no one and nothing. Like cutting out his own tongue and _God_ , how he burns in this moment. She is not an easy woman, he reads that well. Her scars are on the inside, thick tissue all chewed up in her guts while his litter the outside but both shall never fade.  
  
“ _I like you, don’t I?_ ”

*******

She had been standing across the river. Curled into the bank, body shrouded and twisted with marigolds. Water lilies trickled in the river, the sun cutting in the morning window as he stared. **(‘** _Do you love them?_ **’** He’d whispered once. She’d been able to see part of his reflection through the mirror, the sun cutting across his jaw, **‘** _Would you love me if I was one?_ **’)** She had never responded, nearly never did. Yellow pollen scattered across the land, blooming landscape and another lifetime, someone might have called it romantic. The rumble of the river, the hushed voices in a familiar static tone. Even if she could, it wouldn't be for him.

 **JOHN:** I THINK YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL IN THIS LIGHT.

Those red roads lead home and he thinks he could die, right here in his room staring at the near halo of gold that encases her. Everything all consuming, insensate with longing and he is haunted by the long gone touches. He felt it all at once, skin burning and body set alight. Electrified, longing with gravity and desire born impossibly hunger, born carnivorous. He has been hungry before - everyone has but this is more. With nothing that ever satisfies, the maw of love wrapped around him, dragging him down like an anchor. _I do it because I love you_ , _I can’t help it_ \- _that I love you_. His fists curl, he can almost _feel_ her biting her own tongue.

Silence is safety and he curls in the dark patches of his room more often than not. His childhood was defined by it, after all. He patched his identity together from awkward languages of childhood and disjointed movements taken from liars. The bend of his body in the darkness and how the light crawls to her skin. The thick marigolds pressing themselves so close to her skin, trying to form a second layer. He would too, if he could. 

_Who are you running away from?_ He had said, breathless and the snow sticking to the bottoms of his shoes. She was flurried, living alone and making strangers of all the people she met. There was no time to mourn anyone, hiding away pain like a tissue stuffed a sleeve and her voice had wavered with the wind that night. _Everyone_ , she’d said back. It’s a mirror speaking back to him and standing so still and wordless, all alone with no one left in the world. Always trying to convey something that cannot be conveyed, the ghost of her lipstick marks and the glove left behind. A homage to herself, almost. Incapable of being alive and he’s familiar with it all at this point. It’s routine, it’s cereal and toast. The aching feeling of isolation setting in and the swell of someone else's touch on your skin. He’s afraid to give himself and she’s afraid to open up. He’s watched her peel back layers and it should be impressive but he knows exactly how many more she’s got because he has them too.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU’D SAY THAT IN ANY LIGHT.

 **JOHN:** I WOULD. BUT IT DOESN’T MAKE IT ANY LESS TRUE.

He’s taken such great care in shutting himself away, pulling back from everyone and insisting upon building façade on façade. It still takes time, pulling them down for her. Feeling the prickling edges jutting into his fingers like broken glass, unraveling himself piece by piece. It’s uglier but safer to keep it up for everyone else. Joseph claims to read her like an open book but she’s one dropped in a lake or the ocean. The pages are ladened down with water and fusing together, the ink smudging and the book warped out of shape. There’s differences in her, pieces of her bending the wrong way since he’s seen her last. The line of her nose isn’t the same and her fingers bend back.

 **JOHN:** PLEASE. ONE NIGHT. I’LL GIVE YOU JOEY BACK AND I’LL LET YOU GO AFTER. I SWEAR ON MY SOUL.

Parts of her are missing. Some still lost in the car crash and splayed across the highway. Some live in the man she left behind, some in the diner - many in her childhood home. _You’ll hate yourself to death_ , her mouth had swollen like an overripe peach when she spat it out in the bunker. Stagnant, alone like a deer in the forest with the branches being cracked by a stalking predator. He said love transcends hunger and she scraped the last of the cream from her plate. The marigolds brush against her legs, trying to layer themselves between the soft mesh of her skin. A terribly cruel fate to befall two monsters - destined to be alone forever.

It’s a whisper. A loving whisper.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU DON’T HAVE ONE.

*******

“Be gentle, Jonathan,” Her voice had been warm when she’d whispered it, “Please stop this.” She’d been in his kitchen, pulling out his kitchen knives and shoving them into her handbag. She’d pulled out his razors last week and belts from his closet - which had annoyed him more than anything. It had bloomed in her mouth like a fungus, some thick flower deep rooted inside of her throat. Her eyelashes painted shadows on her cheeks in the morning light after he’d pulled her back into his room.

She still felt like silk, the awkward arches of her body and how she never sat quite right. The way she sits in his chair smoking a menthol in her bra, hips on a jutted angle. Her lips are soft, a laugh thick and echoing across the room. “Come back to bed, John,” she’d whispered to him with her warm hands scraping against his neck. The pearl ring on her middle finger pressing cold against his skin when she touched him, a heavy contrast. They’d left the fire on that night, still warming his apartment. It had always seemed so cold without her, before her. The harmony of her tongue, the praise that bubbled in her throat.

Alabaster body, in the dark he allows her to touch him. In the light it becomes too real, creamed flesh marbled in the light and the humdrum of her body taut tight. The soft roll of her stomach fat, patched freckles scattered across her arms and tender flesh of her body encased by the edges of bleeding light. He touches her, spills out a tragic romance in the gaps of her body. She waters the plants that litter the living room, half undressed with his coat draped around her body. Her laugh is like summer rain and his hands graze her hips; golden curls tumbling over her shoulder. His kisses the joint of her neck, the soft arch of how she bends in his hands. He loves her - _he loves her_.

He wakes up alone. She’d never once graced his bed.

*******

**JOHN:** DO YOU REMEMBER FAIRBANK DINER?

 **ELIZABETH:** THEY HAD THE BEST CHERRY PIE.

 **JOHN:** WE MET THERE AFTER THE ELIJAH WILSON CASE. I KISSED YOU UNDER THE STREETLAMP AND YOU TASTED LIKE THAT PIE.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU TASTED LIKE CHOCOLATE. IT FEELS LIKE A LIFETIME AGO.

 **JOHN:** YOU REMEMBER.

 **ELIZABETH:** OF COURSE I REMEMBER. YOU WERE HUMAN BACK THEN.

 **JOHN:** I WAS A SINNER BACK THEN.

 **ELIZABETH:** YOU’RE A MONSTER NOW.

 **JOHN:** I COULD BE YOUR MONSTER.

 **ELIZABETH:** NO, NO YOU COULDN’T. YOU CAN NEVER BE MY ANYTHING.

*******

She enjoys waking up alone in that small shitty single bed above the Spread Eagle. Sometimes she dreams. Often of him. She likes to dream about eating him. He’s pried open for her, spread ribs cracked and blood oozing down cream flesh. She always touches his liver first, digs her nails into it until it pierces and blood begins to pour from it. His lungs next but she’s delicate with them. She likes to dig into the soft tissue of it. Sometimes, she heaves them with dirt. Cuts them directly in half and flays him open, piles fertilizer into it and litters it with marigold seeds. By the time she’s turned her attention to the heart, they’ve already bloomed. His chest cavity is overgrown with them, growing thick and wild with them.

His heart is cupped in her hands, clasped close. She holds it carefully, almost cradles it. It is slit, desperate and gauzed. She’s so careful when she touches it. The ribbon rage of her stomach, unhemmed and frightened. The blood clots up the back of her teeth when she leans down, her lips pressing to the open wounds.

 _But that’s what love is, baby_. She whispered it into the gaps of his ribs, fingers digging into the meaty flesh that lined them. Her neck cracks, joints popping and she’s always been an object for anger. She’s her own advocate for being alive, her hands wanted to touch his, to glide over his cold skin as she examines his terrible corpse. He’s alive, the dirt in his chest rising with every breath.

It’s visceral, it’s violent - it’s a terrible love language to have.

*******

**JOHN:** _THERE TOO LILITH SHALL REPOSE._ **(..)** YOU CAN REST, IF YOU NEED. I’LL PROVIDE SHELTER.

She is silence, unbroken. He can feel her, even miles away. Her throat swells whenever he talks, her body refusing to bend. She hasn’t figured it out yet, not quite placed every piece into the right spot. Boomer follows to the cusp of her heels and the loneliness didn’t set in until day two after she cracked someone’s neck with her bare hands and lay in a pond feeling more alone than she has felt in twenty seven years. More alone then after the car crash, more alone then when she lived in an empty house with her grandparents, more alone than anything and everything. _Takes a cold bitch to do that to a person_. 

The rolling plains of Holland Valley are beautiful and it could have been a dream, how gentle but both she and the land are tainted with a sickness and she’ll bled and bend before she breaks. 

**JOHN:** DID YOU KNOW IN HEBREW, GENESIS 2:18 SAYS _ADAM BECAME ALONE_ , RATHER THAN ADAM WAS CREATED ALONE AND THAT THE HELPER THAT IS MADE FROM HIS RIB IS _LIKE THE ONE SHOWN BEFORE HIM_. THAT BEGINS THE IDEA OF _LILITH_. AT FIRST, WHEN IS SAW YOU AGAIN; I THOUGHT YOU EVE. _THIS IS NOW BONE OF MY BONES AND FLESH OF MY FLESH_. BUT I THINK YOU’RE BETTER SUITED TO LILITH. ISAIAH SPEAKS OF A DEMON NAMED LILITH WHO FULFILLS THE ROLE OF THE SERPENT, OF THE RIVAL AGAINST EVE. 

It’s the same voice, same smooth talking confidence and she can feel it dripping from her radio. It spills out like red wine and she’s been sober too long now to fall for it. The sun crackles on her skin, the cold air settling in and she’s always enjoyed living in a paradox. It isn’t ugly enough yet and there is no one coming. Nancy is a traitor, everything is going to hell and her body must become a weapon. Everyone has a monster inside of them and they are responsible for what happens once it is let out. She wonders for a moment; _how will history look to this?_ Cruelty as nothingness, holding lives in her hands but they run through like water. Her boots sink into the dirt, nothing runs fast enough and she was born distant; easily to fall into her own romantic silence. She’s been quiet for years now, unbroken and the wishbone breaking on the wrong finger. Blood, as sweet and wet as copper; splaying her face and she revels it in. She is a revolver, a machine gun, a knife twisted into the gut. She’ll always want to be gentle but the girl born in the car crash hasn’t been gentle since she became alone again. Suffering is a great teacher.

 **JOHN:** _ELIZABETH CHARLOTTE_ , I HOPE YOU ARE NOT OUR RIVAL.

The radio, _finally_ , goes silent.

*******

_It ends with me_ , she thinks with a mouth full of blood. His plane had crashed with a solid shot from her inside of Nick’s plane and she watched as it spiraled down, his parachute getting caught in the trees but she could see the flames licking at the chute. She’d landed near him, gun drawn and she heard a shot ring - almost grazing against the soft flesh of her cheek. Her shot landed in the center of his chest. He missed; a poor blind shot in the dark after hearing her break a branch under her boots. She’d retaliated after seeing that stupid airplane jacket in the trees.

He’s splayed in the dirt, mud soaking through the back of his jacket. Harsh breathing as she squats down and her fingers twist around the key, dragging him up until his hand clasps around her wrist. His voice is curdled, rough around the edges and bittering, “ _What if Joseph is right?_ Did you ever stop to think about that? .. Everything thinks he’s crazy, but he’s not. Look around you. This world is on the brink. You can feel it in your bones. Look at the headlines, look who’s in charge!” 

She _knows_ the truth. She knows he’s wrong and that the future isn’t certain. There is no God, no destiny - the end of the world might come but by God, Joseph fucking Seed isn’t magically seeing it. Her grip loosens on the key around his neck, eyes softening. “You want this key because you think you’re saving people but they are already safe. We had a plan. _You don’t understand, you don’t believe. You don’t care_ -”

She’s never been soft, especially not for dying men. She’s always enjoyed brutalizing his flesh, her eyes running over the large burn covering his cheek. It’s almost in the same patch as hers. Her mouth has never been holy, nothing about her is. He hiccups, blood spitting up with it and her eyes widen, fingers trailing up to touch the blood. 

“Don’t say that. I _do_ . I always will.” It comes out as a hissed rush, burning the back of her teeth. She is incapable of love, most definitely. The feeling growing and churning inside of her stomach isn’t love, it’s pity. How _quick_ she is to fill in the gaps, half-hauling him into her lap as he coughs up his own lungs, spilling red. Praying to be delivered and his fingers tuck into her heart, ever the tender lover.

It isn’t like the others. There is nothing quick about it. It wasn’t like her first kill when she made a choice that turned on - or off - something inside of her; even if it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t like everyone else in Hope County who drew a gun to her first. Not that it was quick but the deep running disconnect, so many things she couldn’t say out loud aside from walk forward and move on. Add another tally mark to the pile clustered on her arm, accept the fact that the rains of salvation will never come and keep her stomach out of her throat. He’s real, real as sin. His flesh against her skin and blood staining every inch of her. There is nothing holy about this, nothing good or soft. Rotting inside of her mouth quick, a decay so gentle and a sour fruit ripe inside of her. She’ll be sick after this, into a patch of near by daisies that are still half-covered in frost but determined to grow.

“You don’t care about this- about saving people, about the Project.”

“I care about you. Isn’t that enough?” It creaks out of her, lips curved and eyes wide - wild and hungry, hands pressed in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. Her body, mind and soul begging for something more. The grazed of his calloused hands over hers and it brings everything both in and out of context. A siren song, pulling them into another time as desperation is longing and she has wasted being hungry for so long now.

Peached cheeks, her skin flushing and his paling; the finalizing of the sun crawling down under the Henbane and it comes to a close with the dimming of all lights. She feels crushed, pieces of a pomegranate clasped and broken within a palm. A fool! A lover, some starving thing. She can barely hear him: between the roar of Nick’s place still circling the sky, the ripple of his plane coming to a fiery end and the sobbing she didn’t know she was making, “.. Do you remember Fairbank?”

“You know I do.”

“Do you wish we could go back?”

“Yes. I miss that streetlight. I waited for you to call me.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“ _So am I_.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was written to several different songs but dominantly rabid by nicole dollanganger if you want a vibe. if it isn’t obvious, the timeline of this is disjointed; to roughly define it, it goes: 3, 5 (pre-game), 10 (pre-cleansing) 6, 8, 1, 2 (post-confession), 4, 11. 7 & 10 are both dreams and likely take place after 2. don’t expect coherency from me.  
> catch me on tumblr


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